Author-Reader Relationship in Idris Ali’s Novel Dunqulah: riwayah Nubiyah: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach

This study explores the relationship between Idris Ali, as the author of the contemporary Egyptian-Nubian novel: دنقلا: رواية نوبية Dunqulah: riwāyah Nūbiȳah (2014), and his readers. Drawing on Gavins (2007) Text World Theory (TWT), the discourse- and text-world levels are analyzed to reveal the potential cognitive effects of Ali’s use of three paratexts and his stylistic choices on the readers. At the outset of the novel, Ali includes an epigraph that frames the theme, setting, narrative voice, and perspective. It is argued here that the epigraph has played a critical role in bridging the gap normally created by the split discourse-world of the novel as written discourse. The epigraph has indirectly introduced two projected enactors of Ali: the narrator who represents the reliable facet of Ali’s personality and Awad who represents the emotional facet. Moreover, Ali’s appeal to the readers to project enactors of themselves at the text-world level is meant to reduce the ontological distance between them and the narrator. The two paratexts by Heikal (2014) and Al-Hawiri (1996) seem to have further facilitated contextualizing Ali’s narration, which would consequently be perceived as epistemologically credible. As per Ali’s stylistic choices, the use of Free Indirect Discourse (FID) has allowed the narrator to have variable focalization, which would further facilitate the readers’ conceptualization of the enactors’ feelings and motivations. Finally, it is claimed that Ali’s management of the epistemological and ontological distances via the inclusion of the paratexts and his stylistic choices would foster a reliable and empathetic author-reader relationship.